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User talk:KyleH
Hai 2 u RT | Talk 19:26, 2 April 2008 (UTC) :Long time, no talk. ;) --KyleH (talk) 19:26, 2 April 2008 (UTC) :: :P RT | Talk 19:27, 2 April 2008 (UTC) :::If you don't mind, I'd appreciate it if you could address the ad placement problem that I posted-- (Talk) ( ) 19:40, 3 April 2008 (UTC) I'd like to let you know that as aggressive as i seem, i actually harbor a fair bit of respect for you. I understand your job is to speak to us and keep us informed, and people in your position often get the jerks(Such as myself) barking at you. You've handled it well and you keep your cool.--[[User:Darksyde_Never_Again|'DNA']] 00:38, 14 April 2008 (UTC) :I appreciate your sentiment, and likewise I understand your position as well. GuildWiki still has a great community, and at this point we're really trying to support it in any way possible. For the time being, however, it really seems like the best course of action is just to try to maintain the status quo with as few changes as possible. For support reasons, it was necessary migrate to the main Wikia code, and it will be necessary to merge the user database as well, but other than that we're trying to kind of just leave everything as is ... which meant changing back to the old theme. --KyleH (talk) 06:44, 14 April 2008 (UTC) ::On that note, when exactly will the databases be merged? A ballpark estimate would be fine. 06:46, 14 April 2008 (UTC) :::I believe that it will be this week, but I do not know that for certain. I'll check on that and post an update when I have more information. --KyleH (talk) 07:38, 14 April 2008 (UTC) ::::That would be great, thanks for taking the time. 07:41, 14 April 2008 (UTC) A little assistance Hello KyleH, I am not quite sure who is the proper person to contact about this, but I figure since you're basically our PR-with-Wikia guy I may as well notify you. Something seems to have changed without anyone noticing, but as Bureaucrat I have lost my powers to remove adminship and more generally my access to the user rights adjustment form. All I can do is promote people; only "staff" and "Stewards" can set bot status, desysop, set staff flags, etc. This is a problem for two reasons: (1) the position of Bureaucrat becomes quite a bit weaker without equal power to promote and unpromote (it makes GW:ADMIN not work so well); and (2) with all due respect, it is my authority and not Wikia's that should be handling user rights, as the Wikia staff are not qualified to make such decisions, being mostly uninvolved with the community and the general state of things beyond technical issues. (That being said though, since they are your servers, bot status may be your domain. Not sure.) Thanks for your time, and I hope you can forward this to the relevant authorities. I continue to appreciate your patience with us. :) (T/ ) 03:55, 15 April 2008 (UTC) :Hi Entropy. I agree with you completely that the kinds of decisions that you are talking about lie entirely within the community, and we have no intention of infringing upon your right to make them. While you only have the technical ability to promote someone to sysop yourself, please understand that the other tools, such as removing a sysop or adding or removing a bot flag, are still available to you. The only difference is that you must ask a staff member to do it for you. This is for a number of reasons, but it mainly comes down to some technical challenges created by the shared user database, as well as the fact that the tools were designed for a slightly different kind of community. We are currently investigating some options to make more tools available to bureaucrats in certain situations; however, I do not know if or when they will become available. I will, however, convey your concerns to the appropriate people. In the mean time, the Wikia staff is at your service for any kind of request. Feel free to leave a message on my talk page, email the community team, or join the Wikia IRC channel. I know this is a bit of an inconvenience and a departure from your normal procedure, but please rest assured that we have no intention of imposing our standards upon your wiki. --KyleH (talk) 04:22, 15 April 2008 (UTC) ::Thanks for understanding my concerns, Kyle. I am also glad to hear that this is a database issue and not some sort of sinister shady plot to undermine our administration. ;) Just kidding of course. For my convenience, and in fact for everyone, would you mind giving me a list of all the Wikia staff members who are here? I only know a handful, and some still have redlink pages so you couldn't identify them anyways. Thank you again. (T/ ) 05:48, 16 April 2008 (UTC) :::Sure. You can find the full list of staff here. On the gaming team, I'm the community guy, Doug is the marketing guy, and Angie is our boss. You'll also see Angela, Sannse, and Catherine from the Community Team. From the tech team, Eloy moved you to the new Wikia software, and TOR will be working to migrate the user database (I'll have more about that soon). If you have any requests or need assistance, your best bet is to give me a yell or contact the Community Team. :::On rare occasion, you may also see people with a "helper" or "janitor" flag. Helpers are contractors or interns working for the gaming or entertainment teams, and mostly help get new wikis off the ground or launch new features. Janitors are trusted volunteers who have special tools to combat cross-wiki spam and vandalism. Both of these groups will have rights equivalent to "sysop" on your wiki, but will rarely ever use them. (More information is available on the Janitors page.) :::I hope that answers your question. Let me know if anything is unclear or if you have any other questions. --KyleH (talk) 04:14, 17 April 2008 (UTC) bot access Another sysop and I have registered bot accounts that we would like to have added to the Bots usergroup. We will be using these accounts for various automated maintenance tasks - his initially to certain templates, and mine to rewrite a number of redlinks to point to an external site (which used to comprise an internal namespace but was split off to form its own wiki). *My bot account is User:Bot ishmael *User:Randomtime's bot account is User:RT bot —Dr Ishmael 21:08, 27 April 2008 (UTC) :Done! However, I'm just the person with the button--I don't actually make the decision to grant or deny bot access. In the future, please get Entropy's blessing first (or go through whatever approval method the community determines is best). Thanks! --KyleH (talk) 04:24, 29 April 2008 (UTC) ::Third bot, Entropy already knows about it. :p. Just got it working, and was wondering if I could get +bot. I'm not totally sure what exactly it is that its done, but RT says "Get bot before continuing" so.. /ask :p — Warw/Wick 18:00, 29 April 2008 (UTC) :::This is the bot, I'll go get Entropy's Blessing..Thingy :p MayBot 18:34, 29 April 2008 (UTC) ::::Entropy didn't say no :p. I'm not sure what she was actually saying, but bump. :p — Warw/Wick 19:48, 3 May 2008 (UTC) :::::She didn't say yes. You aren't getting your bot flag. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 22:43, 3 May 2008 (UTC) ::::::Sorry if I sound smartass, but it doesnt look like she said no either. :p — Warw/Wick 09:43, 5 May 2008 (UTC) :::::::Entropy is still alive, so go get her to say yes. -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 10:09, 5 May 2008 (UTC) ::::::::Entropy is alive!?!??!?!? NO WAY! :p. — Warw/Wick 10:19, 5 May 2008 (UTC) :::::::::It doesn't seem to me like there is a clear consensus one way or another, and it is not my place to make a judgment call on the issue. Please let me know once there is a clear decision on the issue. --KyleH (talk) 17:05, 5 May 2008 (UTC) ::::::::::Difinitive answer given (Here) — Warw/Wick 14:27, 6 May 2008 (UTC) :::::::::::Done! --KyleH (talk) 22:38, 6 May 2008 (UTC) Usernames Awhile back, you posted a 'username survey' to see how many people already had their name registed on wikia and how many GWiki usernames were registed on wikia by different users. That got archived along with a load of other stuff, so er, whats happening with that? Are the username databases still being merged? if so do you know when that will be?-- - (Talk/ ) 17:40, 28 April 2008 (UTC) :Yup, it's happening, and I just gathered the last of the details for it. I'll be posting about that shortly. --KyleH (talk) 17:42, 28 April 2008 (UTC) ::I would like to direct your attention to this in request for clarification-- - (Talk/ ) 16:56, 30 April 2008 (UTC) re: usernames I've read about this, and that all made sense, but my username was not on the conflict list... yet I have still been moved to GW-Tain. Was this a mistake, or did I not understand something? GW-Tain 15:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC) :I own the account on Wikia, has the same password and email.. and I've still been moved.. D: -- Warw/Wick 15:46, 9 May 2008 (UTC) ::Was the email address on both accounts the same? Either way, please post it to GuildWiki_talk:Wikia Migration and we should be able to take care of it. --KyleH (talk) 17:54, 9 May 2008 (UTC) :::Yup. -- Warw/Wick 18:05, 9 May 2008 (UTC) new bot Hi KyleH, This request comes before the user themselves actually has the account set up, but...User:JediRogue will be asking for bot status soonish, and this is my preemptive approval of the request. Also, we were wondering if Wikia has any rules against bots being given sysop status. If not, I'll be giving Jedi's bot such powers so that we can experiment with some more high-powered botwork such as mass deletions. Thanks in advance. (T/ ) 00:34, 16 May 2008 (UTC) :Here's the bot. JediBot 02:44, 16 May 2008 (UTC) ::I am indeed the owner of that bot (just in case someone suspected it was a random not-me person). Thank you!—[[User:JediRogue|'♥Jedi♥Rogue♥']] 02:49, 16 May 2008 (UTC) :::I went ahead and added the bot flag for you. We generally don't like to have bots with a sysop flag because of the damage that they can do, but now that the bot flag is set, you have the tool necessary to add the sysop flag if you choose to. --KyleH (talk) 21:32, 16 May 2008 (UTC) ::::Thank you, Kyle. My intention for a sysop bot is to have something that can perform large scale-vandalism clean up (deleting a hundred spam articles for example) or larger clean-tasks. Also so I can secretly destroy everyone lol. —[[User:JediRogue|'♥Jedi♥Rogue♥']] 00:03, 17 May 2008 (UTC) User rights management Hi KyleH, I checked the Special pages recently and it seems I'm allowed into User rights management again. I can add people to Bureaucrat, rollback, and sysop groups. However, I can not grant bot status, and I am only allowed to remove people from the rollback group. I am aware that the Wikia system isn't set up to allow bureaucrats these sorts of things - a "Steward" does that - but if I recall correctly you said you were working to resolve that issue. Any further word on that? This, uh, "glimmer of hope" has sparked my interest again, if you catch my drift...I still have a project on hold that I would like to finish. Thanks in advance. (T/ ) 07:45, 16 May 2008 (UTC) :Actually, we are currently discussing just that issue. We performed a MediaWiki upgrade last week that gave us the ability to restore access to User rights management; however, it is still difficult for us to give assign unique rights to certain wikis. I should, however, have some more information for you sometime next week. --KyleH (talk) 21:36, 16 May 2008 (UTC) A Request Greetings KyleH, I would like to request that User:Felix Omni be removed from the Sysop usergroup. In addition, I express hope that soon I shall be able to perform such duties myself; have you received any further information on this matter yet? Thanks in advance. (T/ ) 05:32, 27 May 2008 (UTC) :I realize that it doesn't matter to either of you, but I am aware of Entropy's request and I agree with it. 06:00, 27 May 2008 (UTC) ::On the contrary, Felix, it means a great deal to me, and I am the more torn by your assent. The thing which has made it so hard for me to make this decision (little evidence of that as you may find) is that somehow, you always find humility in the end and realize that you were wrong...but the problem is that it's always after the damage is done. As Dr Ishmael said, it is easier to undo mistakes on a Wiki...but there are some lines that you can't come back from crossing. Trust is one of them. (T/ ) 06:09, 27 May 2008 (UTC) :::Per your request, I have removed the sysop flag. Unfortunately, I don't have any more information about when the expanded user rights will be available other than that they will indeed be granted. I'll check on Tuesday to see if I can get some more information for you. --KyleH (talk) 07:19, 27 May 2008 (UTC) another bot Hi KyleH, Could you add the bot flag to User:PhoenixBot? Thanks! :Done! On an unrelated issue, I was wondering if you could tell me something: does the Wikia's "Helper" usergroup replace/override the "Sysop" usergroup? I was editing a former sysop's user rights today and noticed that they were no longer in the "Sysop" usergroup despite still having their powers. (T/ ) 05:57, 31 May 2008 (UTC) :The , , and groups all have sysop access on all wikis; however, unless a community specifically asks for their help, they generally only use those privileges for assigned maintenance tasks or to deal with vandals who attack more than one wiki. PanSola probably lost his sysop flag when his helper rights were copied over during the database merge, but given that being in the helper group gives him sysop rights anyway, it is not surprising that no one noticed. --KyleH (talk) 06:38, 31 May 2008 (UTC) I like Wikia I think wikia is a cool guy, eh poops on everyoen and doesn't afraid of anything --[[User:R.Phalange|'Dr' R. Phalange]] 20:40, 9 June 2008 (UTC) :Dude - KyleH isn't wikia, he's a staff member RandomTime AutoWikiBrowser issue Would you have any idea why AWB is unable to generate a list of pages from a category? This seems to happen on all Wikia wikis, not just GuildWiki (I directed AWB to a couple other wikis and experienced the same problem). All other forms of list generation work fine. We have ways of working around this issue, but if you could poke the dev team for any information they might have about it, that would be great. —Dr Ishmael 01:31, 12 June 2008 (UTC) :I'll look in to this and get back to you. --KyleH (talk) 05:50, 12 June 2008 (UTC) ::Sorry it took me so long to get back with you, but I wanted to let you know that this is a known issue with AWB and MediaWiki 1.12. We're currently working on an upgrade to the latest build of 1.13alpha, so the issue will probably be resolved when that rolls out; however, I don't know how soon that will be. In the mean time, perhaps you could sweet-talk the AWB developers in to releasing a fix for 1.12? --KyleH (talk) 16:55, 20 June 2008 (UTC) Misplaced adverts I have created a seperate place for users to report bad adverts (either misplaced or otherwise at GuildWiki:Wikia staff noticeboard/adverts RandomTime 17:55, 3 August 2008 (UTC) User rights v.2 Hi KyleH, Has Wikia given you any more info concerning a Bureaucrat's control over user rights yet? It's been a while now. I ask this not because we have a sudden need to get back our old powers, but merely from idle curiosity...Wikia (well, you in particular) is usually so timely in responding to questions and getting back to folks on old queries. You have a reputation to keep. ;) (T/ ) 07:16, 7 August 2008 (UTC) :heh, it's funny you should bring this up now, because I was just about to ping you. Apparently this is a much more difficult change than it originally seemed at the time, so it has taken a while get things rolling. However, I just got word yesterday that this should be fixed very soon (probably on Tuesday if not sooner ... check to see if it is in place already). --KyleH (talk) 23:05, 7 August 2008 (UTC) ::It got implemented shortly after I posted, which I found quite amusing. Thanks again... :) (T/ ) 01:52, 8 August 2008 (UTC) Random Comment of Kindness Hey! I just wanted to pop in and say thanks for the attention and fairly quick responses you've given the Wiki Noticeboard. I'm glad to see that you are doing your best to help the website succeed!-- (Talk) ( ) 23:12, 4 September 2008 (UTC) :Thanks for the comments. On one hand, I'm just doing my job ... but the truth is that I really like you guys and I understand that you've had a lot of obstacles to overcome over the last few months. I just hope that through my efforts, Wikia is becoming less of one. --KyleH (talk) 23:33, 5 September 2008 (UTC) Harmon Are you related to the people with the grocery store?-- ìğá†ħŕášħ 23:36, 5 September 2008 (UTC) :I'm afraid not. In fact, I didn't even know that the grocery chain existed until I was driving through Salt Lake City when I moved out to California in May. There are a lot of Harmons out there. In fact, I can't even Google for my name anymore ... most of the results are about a CSI Miami character. --KyleH (talk) 23:50, 5 September 2008 (UTC) ::Oh, I had already assumed that was your other job. (T/ ) 10:28, 6 September 2008 (UTC) :::CSI Wikia RandomTime 10:36, 6 September 2008 (UTC) ::::My boss (Angie) is already convinced that I live a secret life on weekends. It's probably best not to do anything to perpetuate that theory ... --KyleH (talk) 17:50, 8 September 2008 (UTC) 2 questions 1) Isn't there some function which "protects an article's title" so that it can never be created? It is used so that you don't create a redlink page, only to blank it and prot it with a "because of vandals" explanation commented out. I thought that I saw it somewhere once, but it is not listed in the Special Pages. 2) Is it possible to pre-emptively block an account creation based on the username? Or even better, is it possible to refuse an edit which contain certain keywords/phrases? I ask because of certain vandals with recurring themes that would theoretically be easy to deal with in such a manner. (T/ ) 08:58, 22 October 2008 (UTC) :# Go to the page and hit the prot tab, which will preempt creation except by sysops. --Shadowcrest 14:39, 22 October 2008 (UTC) ::2 - I believe there is an extension that blacklists certain usernames, yes. Blocking edits containing certain phrases is riskier territory (because you don't want to block constructive edits), but given that wikia has a spam filter that blocks edits containing certain external links, it's probably doable. ¬ Wizårdbõÿ777(talk) 17:28, 22 October 2008 (UTC) :::No harm in blocking Podax I think. Could always be called p0dax for GWikians willing to talk about it :P --- -- (s)talkpage 17:31, 22 October 2008 (UTC) ::::Here is the extension I mentioned. ¬ Wizårdbõÿ777(talk) 17:33, 22 October 2008 (UTC) :::::There are two ways to preemptively block the creation of certain pages. You can either protect a non-existing page (just navigate to it and protect it like any other page), or you can create a blacklist page (eg. GuildWiki:Page blacklist), transclude pages that you don't want to be created, and protect that page with cascading protection. The cascading protection automatically protects all transcluded pages in the page. We also have a title blacklist extension that I can enable on GuildWiki. It would allow you to add page titles that you don't want to see created in regex form, so you don't need to have separate protection for each page. :::::Because Wikia has a shared user database, there is no way for an individual wiki to prevent the creation of certain usernames. If a certain user has been problematic, I can regex block the name pattern on all of Wikia, but it would be a pretty extreme measure. :::::Similarly, there is no local phrase blacklist, but I can add a phrase to the global spam blacklist if there is a compelling reason to do so. --KyleH (talk) 17:42, 22 October 2008 (UTC) ::::::Hmm...OK, thanks. I like the cascading protection idea for all the currently protected redlinks, since obviously those do not show up on any category or list of protected pages. ::::::As far as I know, the vandals I am thinking of are GuildWiki specific, but of course I can't possibly keep track of all other Wikia wikis. If they spread that would be a reason to make such global actions, I guess. (T/ ) 18:36, 22 October 2008 (UTC) :::::::If they become especially problematic, let me know and we can look in to doing a Wikia-wide block. --KyleH (talk) 18:41, 22 October 2008 (UTC) ::::::::You could look at User:Entropy/blacklist and see if other such vandalisms are taking place on other Wikis...that one is a recurring problem which, while not especially problematic, is persistent. (T/ ) 18:43, 22 October 2008 (UTC)